The U.S. men’s national team’s annual January camp is shifting to a new time of the year.
December will now be the new month for the program’s camp, U.S. Soccer vice president Oguchi Onyewu confirmed Friday. It will begin annually starting in December 2026, five months after the USMNT’s involvement at the FIFA World Cup.
The January camp normally falls outside of a FIFA international window, meaning that European-based USMNT players are not involved. However, MLS-based players are typically included as it falls outside of the season’s schedule.
Many of the current USMNT players have used January camps to boost their international stocks including Tim Ream, Patrick Agyemang, Matt Freese, and Max Arfsten.
“A core pillar of ‘The U.S. Way’ emphasizes two key priorities: expanding opportunities for both youth and senior national team players and maintaining deep, cooperative relationships with our domestic leagues and clubs,” Onyewu said.
“The January camp has long been an important platform for player evaluation and integration, with many current and former U.S. men’s national team players earning their first international experiences during this period,” he added. “Its impact on our program’s growth and player pathway has been significant and enduring.”
The USMNT earned a pair of home wins over Costa Rica and Venezuela respectively during its last January camp earlier this year.
Let’s face, there will always be a few ex-college players in MLS and on the USMNT. The choice between college or MLS is being made by 17-18 y.o. players and their parents. Some of the best young players are also capable of getting into the top tier of schools. They have to decide what is best for themselves. Even schools like Princeton which does not offer athletic scholarships, but does offer need based financial aid with no loans to all admitted students provide a very strong case to play there rather than MLS where they would be on an academy or 2nd team and still have to earn their way up. The possibility of a career ending injury makes the college path more attractive for many; even the top scorer in MLS-Next with 39 goals took the college path.
Suppose you are a very good 18 y.o player for one of the academy teams and you are weighing
If you are in an MLS Academy and 18, you know. If you aren’t on the Next Pro roster which is 16-20 yr olds mostly, you aren’t going to become a pro going down that path. Go to college and hope something changes. If you couldn’t get in an MLS Academy or couldn’t move near one college is your path. I think you could move from a non MLS team in Next to join Next Pro but it doesn’t seem to happen a lot, not sure on the structure of that. Next Pro has gotten rid of a lot of the MLS Academy to a year in college then back to full MLS. In Freese’s one year with Union II (Bethlehem Steel at the time) he was behind John McCarthy (who won MLS Cup last year who was 24 at the time) and playing in USL against mostly real men in their mid 20s and early 30s. Today he’d be in Next Pro facing other teenagers from the academy system not men fighting for their last paychecks of their careers. That’s why Freese or Morris or your guy John Nelson went to college for a year there just weren’t minutes for them on reserve teams back then. They’ll be guys like Agyemang or Arfsten that come through because they developed late or changed positions and probably some keepers because only one can play at a time, but fewer and fewer each year. They ID camps are to catch those men and women who have been missed or slipped thru the cracks and catch them at 20 or 21 not 23 or 24 when they graduate.
Move stems from MLS moving preseason earlier.
It’s probably in either the CBA and/or the tv contract that they have to have a domestic camp in 2026. So we play it one more time.
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Unlikely that someone comes out of nowhere in January to make WC roster so put it in December and let the new manager run the guts through their paces.
first, doing this after a series of lousy windows and tournaments reeks arrogance. what, we finally had an ok window without a loss, so we’re done looking? that was australia, not argentina.
second, while acting like we are set, we can’t get jedi healthy for a window, and have issues at other spots like CB and DM. i’m like, did you watch the same games i did, poch?
third, i think they are full of crap. they claim to be setting up more robust talent ID processes. then they get rid of january/start messing with the winter camp where a lot of the new blood enters. call it the domestic ID camp.
so many of the things they do sound like eurosnob cliches.
Name me the CB in MLS that hasn’t been in camp that is going to break in after a couple games against other NTs B/C teams and then mix with the current pool in a one week window in March. Time is out on that ship. Tristan Blackman is probably going to be the MLS Defender of the Year were you impressed in September? If you are ready to shut down Argentina we know who you are.
And here we are still waiting for IV to name a CB who hasn’t had a chance that is going to shut down Mbappe or Haaland or Messi.
the fact i had work to do and you grandstand in my absence doesn’t make you right
this is stupid. i understand the original theory was to bridge the long MLS offseason when the league started in april and ended in the fall. MLS players were then not going to be ready for the march window, and they still might have a couple months downtime before january. so we’d bring guys in for training and games through february, who would then switch over to club preseason, and be fit and ready for games in march that might include qualifiers.
i get MLS moved their season forward and the camp is now overlapping with MLS preseasons. my guess is this is really about avoid that clash. if you put the camp in the literal offseason what is “atlanta” going to say about it.
but my concern here would be december is MLS’ off time and you’d be zapping that for anyone called that window. we have enough injuries. you will increase that for the MLS side if you take away their off time.
last, i am bored with the abstracted, theoretical explanations for our choices at the moment (eg tactics). from just our most recent roster, arfsten, mckenzie, luna, tessmann, aaronson, agyemang, and our top 3 keepers were all january camp first caps. that’s not exactly tim ream debuting 15 years ago. that’s guys as recent as january 2025.
that and to the extent i am hearing that we feel relatively set for the world cup roster, the results don’t support that.
but someone wrote a white paper.
a bunch of other abstracted incorrect hobbyhorse nonsense is batted about in the abstract to imitate europe: (a) college is pointless; (b) college should play yearround; (c) MLS should be traditional schedule; (d) turn over to development to academies.
the scheduling stuff ignores winter weather in the northern tier, and seems to be pushed by noncollege players who don’t realize we’re allowed some spring training and games.
while U20 is no longer 90% college, college still produces a lot of pros and a fair amount of the NT gets at least a season.
many academies are junk. the dynamo it’s been years since we could get a kid to regular first team starting or minutes, despite being routinely trash, much less bigger things, and our 2 good youth NT types (mcglynn and raines) come from other teams’ setups.
The last two U20s had no one who played even a season of college. 10 of the 25 most recent call ups for the NT did play at least one season. Aidan Morris was the youngest at 23. He just missed the MLS Next Pro series (he and Seb Berhalter were with Crew Academy but there was no place at the time to get games at the time so they left Columbus for a semester and then came back. They might have stayed longer but Covid hit). Kids just aren’t going to leave their academies and go to college as much if at all anymore. Colleges are still going to put guys in USL and USL1 with more and more teams joining those leagues, but to send guys to NT is going to be less and less. Arfsten and Agyemang aren’t exactly promoting skill development in college as both lack some basic fundamental understandings. You will still have a few trickle in here and there Bombito for Canada was at Iowa Western CC a few years ago and is now a star in Ligue 1. Agyemang and Dike have made regional contributions.
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As for the USSF recommendations. The committee included athletic directors and former college players so I don’t think the recommendations were Willy Nilly without knowledge of how the system currently works. The “year round” schedule would actually run Sept-Nov (current season) and pick back up in late February – May with some flexibility to play more games in early fall or later Spring for northern teams. Most colleges play on turf so not ideal but does allow for late fall/late winter games. It’s not as crazy as the headlines make it sound. They would end up playing about the same amount of games you just wouldn’t have so many Thursday – Sunday game days with travel in between. You’d be playing mostly one match a week instead of two every weekend. That’s pie in the sky though, USSF would like MLS to take that schedule but that doesn’t mean it’s happening. A lot of the ideas about NCAA and USSF working better together in terms of development and their new TalentID initiatives could actually keep college soccer relevant and provide players with a clearer pathways.
dude, i already set you straight on this, the other day. look at GK. turner was college and no YNT. freese had a season at harvard and was only brought in at U23. schulte was college and had limited U20 caps. brady, the actual pipeline keeper, was the afterthought for the window, and probably not even 4th string if we were picking first choice.
you’re saying, “but the U20s don’t have college kids.” you mean the ones they deliberately exclude? they basically assume the pro kids are better. ergo “none of the college kids can break the squad.”
when a few years later all the keepers are college kids, and several of the field players played some college (miles, ream, arfsten, mckenzie, roldan, morris, agyemang) — many with no YNT pipeline experience — your theory becomes obviously simplistic. that suggests some mix of scouting glitches or blind spots or the like.
it’s a cliche that these U20 teams are a mix of future pros and NT, and some duds. but i personally think the back half of their rosters is not better than college. they are pros and esteemed accordingly. they aren’t necessarily better players.
and it corrects itself at the senior NT level. particularly i don’t think we can pick and develop keepers lately. so a college kid getting regular minutes can come in, find a first team MLS job, and jump the queue. and IMO there’s some overrated rubbish like wynder, norris, beaudry, etc.
IV: a couple things the # of college players that are going to come thru will continue to go down as the need to leave your academy to get games is no longer there because of MLS Next Pro. Prior to 2022, if you aged out of the Development League and your club didn’t have a USL team you went to college. Now that space is taken by MLS Next Pro. There will be a few guys that slip through that develop late physically or didn’t have the opportunities or money to play high level youth soccer and get discovered but the coverage maps of MLS and USL are making that less and less likely. GK seems to be a spot where that is still happening. Freese like Aiden Morris was in an academy but went to Harvard because there weren’t minutes to be had at Phi. Union and you know it’s Harvard. Schulte was in St. Louis FC (USL Academy) had STLC (MLS) been around he would have not gone to college but played in Next Pro.
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One of the suggestions was to align schedules so athletes weren’t missing important college matches to attend ID camps. By the time many college players begin earning time they are passed the U20 window. For example Stanford #1 ranked their keeper Rowan Scnebly, is too old for U20s (a Timber academy developed player by the way). Bryant’s (#2) starter is Brazilian and their backup is a Red Bull academy product. Logan Erb (a good Houston boy and Dynamo academy product) starts for #3 NCSt. He is also too old for the U20s, his backup is Danish. Keeper may continue to be a position that we see guys go to college then later NT because there is largely one guy who will play at each age division. If Slonina, doesn’t leave for Chelsea Chris Brady probably goes to college to get minutes.
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In a country of 340 million people you are going to miss a few. I mean they found Obed Vargas in Alaska so we are finding more and more.
IV,
“dude, i already set you straight on this, ”
You’ve done all kinds of things on SBI.
Setting anyone “straight” on anything is not one of them.
You’ve told us countless times about your playing record. Which puts you at about the same level of understanding college soccer andhow it relates to he pros(mostly MLS) as maybe a couple of thousand , if not more , other SBI posters.